Ennio Morricone - Cinema Suites for Violin and Orchestra (Marco Serino)

Information

Composer: Ennio Morricone

• Sergio Leone Suite
• Canone inverso
• Giuseppe Tornatore Suite
• The Mission
• Brian De Palma Suite
• Moses and Marco Polo Suite
• Per le antiche scale (from the Bolognini Movie)

Marco Serino, violin

Orchestra Haydn di Bolzano e Trento

Andrea Morricone, conductor

Date: 2022

Label: Arcana

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Description

The relationship between Ennio Morricone and what is known as “applied” music (that is, music applied to other arts) was as complex, variable, and rich in second thoughts as the way the academic world and what used to be referred to as high-brow culture viewed the composer himself and applied music in general. Towards the end of the 1980s, Morricone began reworking some of the famous scores originally composed for film and television, producing a number of suites envisaged for concert performance and hence, in time, also for new recordings. In these works he emphasizes connections and relations, similarities and/or contrasts, between compositions from different periods in his highly prolific creative life. Some of them are named after particular directors with whom he worked, others after movies or serials for which he wrote the scores, and others still after specific aggregative concepts.

At the time, Morricone’s name was already well known worldwide, but it was only gradually that film scores began to gain acceptance in cultural spheres that had hitherto viewed them with suspicion. In due course, concert halls and famous recording labels opened up to embrace his concept of applied music.

Starting in the early 2000s, the “concerto suites” were further developed and transformed into versions for solo instrument and orchestra. Whether this was the result of a specific commission or the fruit of long-standing friendship and admiration between the composer and the soloist, it spurred Morricone to reappraise, deconstruct, and rethink some of his most famous themes, which he often developed on an unheralded scale.

By means of this focus on reworking existing material, he continued to reflect with great originality on his own identity as a composer, on his background as a person, and on how he related to the wider sphere of the history of music and culture.

This process of continual revision and reflection is essential to the elaborate concept of “dynamic immobility,” explained in the book we co-authored, Ennio Morricone: In His Own Words (Oxford University Press, 2019)¹, where readers will find a more complete account of what the composer intended. It is also central to the magnificent collection of hitherto unpublished works played here by the Haydn Orchestra, conducted by Andrea Morricone, and by the composer’s chosen violin soloist, Marco Serino, leader for the past twenty years of the Roma Sinfonietta. In close collaboration and dialogue with Serino, in 2020 Ennio Morricone completed his revision of all the versions of the Suites for violin and orchestra included in this recording.

With highly refined scoring and transitions between one theme and another, Morricone skilfully echoes the sound archetypes that for decades have been familiar to audiences across the globe, often handling them as though they were objective mnemonic entities that may lead elsewhere. By means of some stunning countermelodies and counterpoint, the solo instrument does not simply give voice to the famous main themes but instead often creates a form of dialogue that seems to capture the elderly composer’s wide-ranging reflections. Two revealing cases in point are the themes from Cinema Paradiso and The Mission.

Listening to these recordings is like being taken on an exceptional journey through Ennio Morricone’s vast poetic universe, a world that revolves around movies and the stories they tell. Our invaluable guide on this extraordinary voyage is Marco Serino, the violin soloist.

— Alessandro De Rosa

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Ennio Morricone (10 November 1928 – 6 July 2020) was an Italian composer, conductor and musician widely regarded as one of the greatest film composers in history. Over a career spanning seven decades, he created more than 400 film and television scores and over 100 classical works. He achieved international fame through his collaborations with director Sergio Leone, notably scoring The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Morricone received numerous honors, including two Oscars, and influenced generations of composers. His innovative, genre-blending style and memorable melodies left a lasting impact on cinema worldwide.

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Marco Serino graduated from the Santa Cecilia Conservatory and later earned the Premier Prix de Virtuosité at the Geneva Conservatory. In 1990, he founded the Bernini Quartet and joined I Musici. As a soloist and chamber musician, he has collaborated with leading artists and performed with major orchestras and in prestigious venues worldwide. Several distinguished composers have dedicated works to him. Serino has recorded for prominent labels, including Decca and Arcana, and is also a musicologist. He currently teaches at the Trento Conservatory and performs on a 2021 Gonzalo y Bayolo violin.

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